It has been a little more than 7 years since our beloved football game saw daylight and since then it has entertained many of us each and every day. This month, as you probably are already aware of , we celebrate a very remarkable milestone in the history of this magnificient game. For the 100th time, teams will be readying themselves again to have a shot at winning their league, looking for that one bargain they can sign or once again complain about their academy player. To celebrate this happening, a player cup will be organised on the 21st of April, at 12:00 (CEST)for which 128 teams are expected to partake in.

The costs of this Anniversary Cup will be fully covered by (Team:58281) , therefore, no credit-fee will be required to sign up!

Some information regarding signing-up and data:

* The Cup will be held on Sunday, the 21st of April at 12:00 (CEST)

* The maximum amount of participants will be 128

* All managers playing in the Netherlands will be allowed to participate, regardless of their Q

* For teams playing outside the Netherlands, a Q-limit of 86.00 will be in place

* An exception to the above rule may be made for teams invited personally by the creator of the Cup.

* The password to this Cup is NL123. Teams who join illegitimately will be excluded from participation.

Some information regarding the rules and prizes:

* In this Cup, you will be able to win various prizes for accomplishing remarkable feats (listed below)

* Playing with Soft tackles is absolutely mandatory. Should the breaking of this rule be suspected, exclusion from future events may be a consequence

* Please give us up to 1 week to process everything and send everyone his or her prize(s)

Sponsors for the special prizes:

Sponsors ensure that it will be possible to offer a wide variety of prizes. Therefore, I want to specifically credit the below-mentioned sponsors for their donations. Thanks a lot guys! If you have not donated yet but feel like doing so, please contact (Team:58281).

- CM Allstars (Team:68687) : 10 credits

- Hot Chicks Academy (Team:171804): 10 credits

- Team Bwo (Team:58354): 10 credits

TOTAL (14 / 04 / 2013) 30 credits

Special Prizes

Cup Winner: 40 credits

Opponent of Winner in Round 1: 5 credits

Opponent of Winner in Round 2: 5 credits

Opponent of Winner in Round 3: 5 credits

Topscorer: 10 credits

Top Assister: 10 credits

Top Performer (minimum of 3 matches) 10 credits

Most unfortunate: 5 credits

Scoring the most goals during one match (excl. penalty-shootout): 10 credits

Welcome to my 2nd blog. Those who have read the first one, know that Im still new to ManagerLeague, but that I spend a lot of time figuring out ways to train my team the best I can. In this blog, I will unravel the mystery of how to rapidly improve your players during a season, turning even the worst players into compete-able powerhouses, and making your opponents look in awe and disbelief :D

Finding the Right players

While any player could be turned into a world class player using this technique, picking the right players for your team will optmize the effect even more. A player can be reviewed by three different aspects, to determine how suitable he would be for your team and how likely it is that he is going to improve himself in the future.

Age

The first important one is a player his Age. Players younger than 21 years old, will improve themselves quicker than older players. And while young players may be more expensive, it is always worthwhile to spend money on them because if trained properly, they improve themselves so quickly that their value could be doubled or even tripled during a season.

Attributes

The second important thing are their stats. Every player, depending on his position, has a main attribute, and several secondary attributes. Main attributes count the heaviest for his Quality. Due to this, it is best if a player has a low main attribute, because this means that in the long run, he will have to gain less attributes. To further explain , I will give two examples, one of a good player, and one of a waste-of-money player.

As you can see, Peter Kewell has 84 passing, which is very high because he is only Q68. Because his Passing is so high, his secondary attributes, which are Tackling, Shooting and Speed, are all very low (66,48 and 53) Lets say you want to train Peter Kewell so that he will be 90 in these 4 attributes. This means he needs to gain a total of +109 attributes.

Next is Michal Kaminský. Kaminský's passing is only 68. Because it is very low, his tackling, shooting, and speed attributes are considerably higher (58,67 and 79) Lets say you want to train him in the exact same way you want to train Peter Kewell (so that he will be 90 in everything) Guess what? Kamiský only would need to gain +88 attributes!!! It means that he will need to gain 21 less attributes compared to Kewell, to get at the same level.

Hopefully you now understand that its important for players to have a low main attribute. Below is a list of all positions, and their main (in bold) and secondary attributes

Goalkeeper : Keeping , Passing , Speed , Stamina and Perception

Defender: Tackling , Passing, Heading , Speed and Stamina.

Midfielder: Passing, Tackling , Shooting, Speed and Stamina.

Attacker: Shooting, Passing, Heading, Speed and Perception.

Potential

The final aspect to review a player is his potential. While in-game, you can go to Team -> Staff, to hire a Scout. The scout can determine the potential of any player in the game, which ranges from 0.5 star to 5 stars. Obviously, the more stars a player has, the more potential he has. However, beware! If the player you are trying to scout has only played a few matches during the season, or none at all, it will be impossible for your Scout to determine his Potential. Instead, he will give a rough estimation, which is more precise the better your Scout is. NEVER buy a player based on just one single scout report. Always scout a player multiple times, to find out wether his potential is high, or low.

Training the cr*p out of Players!

Once you have gathered the right players in your team, it is time for the next step: Training the cr*p out of your Players! As you may see in the image below, +6Q and more during a season is easily possible, even for a new Manager. The key to success lies in just one thing:

*drumroll drumroll*

Old Players. The reason why you need Old players is because of the way the attribute distribution system in ManagerLeague works. Instead of players who improve themselves every match, your entire team gains a random amount of attributes after a match. These attributes are then distributed across your players, based on their potential, age, wetheror not they played , and position played. Since Old players are less likely to gain an attribute, this means that it is more likely that an attribute will be allocated to a young player, whom you want to gain.

Here is a screenshot of my current team. The old player who has gained the most so far is Ispas Sorina (+18). The youngster who has gained the least is Gunnar Axelsson (+29). So as you can see, the youngsters in my team gain a massive amount of attributes compared to other players in the team.

IMPORTANT: A young player will not develop in the same way if he plays in a team with more young players, or no old players!!! Due to this, dont expect to gain the same amount as I do unless you buy old players just like I did.

Matches

So now that we got that out of the way, there is just one final step left : playing matches. Different matches have different results on your players. The more important a match is, the more likely it is that a player will learn something out of it and improve himself. The following types of matches are ranked in importance:

1. Champions League / Samsung Supercup matches

2. Domestic Cup matches

3. League matches

4. Player Cup matches

5. Friendly matches

You can conclude that the 30 league matches you're going to play during an ML season, are going to play a crucial role. Not letting your young players play in these matches isnt smart. Still, eventhough Friendly matches are at the very bottom of the list, they infact will form the most important part of your Manager League career. You can play 100 friendly matches in a season, and optionally, you can play another 100 by paying credits. Even if you do not wish to pay money for this wonderful game, make sure you atleast play the 100 free friendly matches!! Playing friendlies can net you hundreds and hundreds of extra attributes!

Fitness

Finally, there is one issue left which you all will stumble upon eventually: Fitness. After every match, a player will lose a random amount of Fitness. This could be 0, but it can also be as much as -6!

Once a player's fitness reaches 79 or lower, he will become lightly injured. This injury will worsen if the fitness falls below 59 and if it goes below 39 your player is pretty much in a coma and will need weeks to recover :)

Fitness 0-39 Extreme Injury

Fitness 40-59 Medium Injury

Fitness 60-79 Light Injury

Fitness 80-99 Tired

Fitness 100 Completely fit

Players recover their fitness after every training. Below is a table of how much they will regain:

Player NOT put to rest : +2 Fitness

Player put to rest: +2 fitness AND +X Fitness (X is the first number of their Stamina Attribute, so for a player with 65 Stamina it would be +6 fitness)

Rest in Training Slot: +1 Fitness (for every training slot)

I would suggest all new managers to rest their players at every single training, except for the Training Camp. You can put Rest in a Training Slot if your players are very low on Fitness. Otherwise, just let them train on Attacking, Defending etc.

Players can run out of fitness fairly quick but by substituting them during a match, the chance of them losing fitness is lowered. Ofcourse as you can guess, you can use this to your advantage so that young players can play more matches and thus gain more during a season.

I hope you now understand Manager League better than you did before you started to read this. You can also PM me with questions or ask for advice, and also dont hesitate to leave a comment below ^.^

There is little to blog about if all you do is log in, train your players, play your matches, but dont compete for any notable prize. However, in my second season, I have the feeling that Im working towards something great. These players one day will play at the highest level in ML, and bring success to the club. Ofcourse, there's a long road ahead of myself before I can even think about pushing to the higher divisions. At the moment, things look very bad in the league, and its an illusion to think that maintaining ourselves in Div 3 Dep 11 is even remotely possible. But this isnt something to concern myself about, because the players are developing themselves so well, that I have no doubt that in 2 seasons, I will be back in this department again and will compete for a playoff position.

This currently is the Berry Blizz team

Not bad after 1 1/2 season I guess. I have two promising defenders, a midfielder whose close to reaching Q72, and not to mention a Q77 Attacker who I love to bits ^.^ (probably because he's the only player remaining from my original squad)